Help me with automated news script?

ViciOuS · 04-09-2005

I'm fairly new to php and i successfully made a automated news script but i have a few questions on enhancing it.

First off, the news is displayed from oldest(on the top) and newest(on the bottom), but how would i flip that so the new news is displayed on top?

Secondly, i need someway of deleting unwanted news, can anyone help me here?

Thanks in advance.

scrowler · 04-10-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by ViciOuS

First off, the news is displayed from oldest(on the top) and newest(on the bottom), but how would i flip that so the new news is displayed on top?

simple. goto your SQL query, and add "ORDER BY id DESC" on the end, assuming you have an id column. if not, add one! this will return the same results but in reverse order (i.e. newest first)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ViciOuS

Secondly, i need someway of deleting unwanted news, can anyone help me here?

you need to make a secure panel (use sessions, hashing/encryption for passwords etc, check out this tutorial on how to make a membership system) and in that panel, make a page that lists all the entries, you can click the title of one and goto another page, where you use the SQL query: "DELETE FROM yournewstable WHERE id = '5'". this is an example, and would delete the database row with id = 5.

have fun

ViciOuS · 04-10-2005

Thanks a bunch man, I really appreciate it. I actually made an admin control panel before i started workin on the news script, lol.. but thanks for the help on that subject anyways.

I got another question. On the form that i use to post news, if i use line breaks in the form, it doesn't produce it on the news.php page. Why is this?

inkblot · 04-10-2005

because html doesn't render white space. push the letter a then hit the space key 1000 times then hit t and save it as an html file. open it and watch it produce 'a t'.

solution: nl2br();

put it around your content IE nl2br( $r['news'] );

ViciOuS · 04-10-2005

I don't know what to say, lol.. it works flawlessly and i've never been so happy in my life.

Anyways, another issue:

I've got a delete news page that displays the news in my admin cp, but how would you make it to where you click the title and it takes you to another page where you can delete it?.. Sorry if I don't make much sense but like I said, i'm somewhat of a newbie to php and I really want to get better.

**Man1c M0g** · 04-10-2005

Instead of deleting the old news, why don't you alter your new scripts so that it only shows the newest 'n' number of entries? That way you can have news archive functionality, a clean frontpage, and avoid the need to constantly delete old news (which will quickly become tedious, trust me...).

BlodoPKNZ · 04-10-2005

To do what Mog said just use the 'LIMIT n' handle in your sql query with the n being the number of results you want to get.

scrowler · 04-10-2005

solution: something like this:

Code:

<?php
if($_GET['article_id']){
  $sql = "DELETE FROM news WHERE id = '".$_GET['article_id']."' LIMIT 1";
  # ...
} else {
  $sql = "SELECT id, Title FROM news ORDER BY id DESC";
  while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc(mysql_query($sql)))
    echo '<p>
             <a href="'.$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'?article_id='.$row['id'].'">Edit: '.$row['Title'].'</a>
             </p>';
}
?>

obviously run some checks on the var like:

Code:

if(!is_numeric($_GET['article_id'])) die("article_id is not a numeric number1");

ViciOuS · 04-10-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by Man1c M0g

Instead of deleting the old news, why don't you alter your new scripts so that it only shows the newest 'n' number of entries? That way you can have news archive functionality, a clean frontpage, and avoid the need to constantly delete old news (which will quickly become tedious, trust me...).

Well i'ts not that I want to delete old news, it's just that, I want other admins to be able to delete unwanted news alltogether. Like say an admin makes some news but he forgot a whole paragraph and he needs to delete it and try again.

Here is my DelNews.php It just gives me the error saying news_id isnt a number

Code:

<?php
session_start();

// Define session and password variables
$pw = $_SESSION['password'];
$ad_pw = "******";
$enpw = md5($ad_pw);

// Check to see if they are logged in..
if ($enpw != $pw){
header("Location: Loggedin.php");}

mysql_connect('localhost','ryan_clanad','******');
mysql_select_db('ryan_clanad');

 if(!is_numeric($_GET['news_id'])) die("news_id is not a numeric number1");

 if($_GET['news_id']){
  $sql = "DELETE FROM news WHERE id = '".$_GET['news_id']."' LIMIT 1";

} else {
  $sql = "SELECT id, title FROM news ORDER BY id DESC";
  while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc(mysql_query($sql)))
    echo '<p>
             <a href="'.$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'?news_id='.$row['id'].'">Edit: '.$row['title'].'</a>
             </p>';

}
?>

scrowler · 04-11-2005

see what happens if you remove that line

Order · 04-11-2005

Something tells me that GET variables are always strings, part of the HTTP Specification I believe (could be wrong), so is_numeric would return false always with a GET variable.

ViciOuS · 04-11-2005

Well, I kinda scrapped the old delete.php and made a new script that does both edit and delete. But once again i'm having troubles. Could it be because of the GET variable is bringing me false info?

Ok, this is what i've got for my EditNews_interface.php

Code:

<?php 
include('mysql_connect.php');

$sql = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM news ORDER BY id DESC");

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql))
{
?> 


<html><head><title></title>
<style>
<!--
a{text-decoration:none}
//-->
</style>
<style>
a:visited{color:blue; text-decoration:none; }
a:active{color:red; text-decoration:none; }
a:link{color:red; text-decoration:none; }
a:hover{color:orange; text-decoration:underline; }
</style>
</head>
<BODY background="../images/image_22.gif">
<div align="left">
 <TABLE width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3">
   <tr> 
     <td><b><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">
<?php echo $row['title'] . ' | Posted by: ' . $row['name'] . ' on ' . $row['date'] . ' ID# ' . $row['id']; ?></font></b>
     </td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
     <td>
      <?php echo "[ <a href=\"EditNews.php?id=\$id\">Edit Post</a> ] [ 
      <a href=\"DelNews.php?id=\$id\">Delete Post</a> ]"; ?>
     </td>
     <br>
   </tr>
 </TABLE>
</div>
</body>
</html>

<?php
}
?>

My DeleteNews.php

Code:

<?php
session_start();

// Define session and password variables
$pw = $_SESSION['password'];
$ad_pw = "******";
$enpw = md5($ad_pw);

// Check to see if they are logged in..
if ($enpw != $pw){
header("Location: Loggedin.php");

}else{

include('mysql_connect.php');

$id = $_GET['id'];

 if(isset($id)) {
mysql_query("DELETE FROM news WHERE id='$id'") or die("Could not delete news post"
 . mysql_error());
}else{
   echo 'Deletion of news failed, system error, no id specified...';
}
}
?>

EditNews.php

Code:

<?php

include('mysql_connect.php');

$ID = $_GET['id'];

$sql = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM news WHERE id='$ID'");
$row = mysql_fetch_object($sql);
?>

<div align="center">
  <TABLE width="80%" valign="center">
    <tr bgcolor="#EEEEEE">
      <td><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">
&nbsp;News: </td>
      <td><TEXTAREA Name="news" Rows="15" Cols="55"><?php echo $row->news; ?></TEXTAREA></td>
    </tr>
  </TABLE>
  <TABLE width="80%" valign="center">
    <tr bgcolor="#CCCCCC">
     <td><center>
        <INPUT type="submit" tabindex="5" name="submit" value="Add News">
       </center></td>
    </tr>
  </TABLE>
[ <a href="Loggedin.php" target="iframe">Back to Admin CP</a> ]
</div>

And finally, my Handle_EditNews.php

Code:

<?php
include('mysql_connect.php');

$news = $_POST['news'];
$ID = $_GET['ID'];

 if(!isset($ID)) {
echo 'A system error occured and the editing was unable to finish';

}else{
$worked = mysql_query("UPDATE news SET news='$news' WHERE id='$ID'");

 if(!$worked) {
   die('Didn\'t work because' . mysql_error());
}else{
   echo 'You have successfully updated the news.';
}
}
?>

I've still got a AddNews.php and a news.php but those are working fine. It's just, my EditNews_interface.php page is not working properly. The Edit links all have the same url, and same as the delete links.

When i click an edit link, it takes me to my editnews page but theres nothing in the textarea, and when i click on a delete link, it takes me to a blank page in my iframe.. not even an error

Order · 04-11-2005

in your links, you use $id, where is that assigned, perhaps you mean $row['id'] instead? Right now, $id is null, nothing there, which would not error, but not return anything either.

ViciOuS · 04-11-2005

Hmm, I tryed declaring $id as $_GET['id'], then I tryed putting in $row['id'] instead of $id, then I tryed a few other things but they all seem to do absolutely nothing

It's displaying all the edit links as the same link, so when you get a visited link, all the edit links for every row turn into visited links (aka the color blue :-\) Same goes with the delete links.

It feels as if the solution to this mess is on the tip of my tounge.. i'ts very frustrating lol.

BlodoPKNZ · 04-11-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by Order

Something tells me that GET variables are always strings, part of the HTTP Specification I believe (could be wrong), so is_numeric would return false always with a GET variable.

Yeh i got the same feeling...

Just do a $somevar = $_GET['someid'] + 0;
That should change it to int if its a number, but if its a string it will not change it, just add a zero at the end of the line. And keep the is_numeric check when using this.